I. The politics of fear, distrust and deception
I live in California; We have problems, but I will stay. California is a failed state; I don’t think that new faces (new governor) can resolve our problems. We need a new state constitution starting from scratch and eliminating all past ballot initiatives. The Mogambo guru tells us that California “has finally bankrupted itself, as all socialist commie-thinking countries do” Mogambo wisdom How did ballot initiatives and public opinion polls, thought to promote democratic government, become the tools of corporate control? The Economist, a famous leftist publication, recently wrote about ballot initiatives as the crack cocaine of democracy.
Public opinion polls and ballot initiatives are great tools for manipulation. But first, let’s return to California as a “socialist commie-thinking country”. Well, the evil Terminator cut business taxes in the last year (reluctantly, he had to do it to save them), he wants to let Big Oil drill off Santa Barbara (that’s OK with me, if the citizens of Santa Barbara County approve it) but he nixed any tax on oil extraction- almost all states tax oil at the wellhead but the governor has to protect big Oil, and we really don’t need their money. You didn't read about those tax cuts in WaPo? The governor has learned from Wall Street kingpins like Bernie Madoff, Richard Fuld (yes, he brought down Lehman Bros., but he reaped $350 million for himself- a man to admire) and Hank Paulson. So Arnoldo will save us with leverage, borrowing and accounting tricks. He proposes to “borrow”- seize is more accurate - money from cities and Counties.
He promises that his successor will pay them back someday. He’ll be gone, just like King Richard Fuld, and some cities and towns will be bankrupt (San Diego is in danger) but that’s just the wisdom of the market. Schwarzenegger is a clever communist- a child might think that he is a shill for business, but we know better.
Do you know who the first public relations specialist was? Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, born in 1891, was our first spinmeister. Bernays came to the US with his family in 1892 and graduated from Cornell. He was very interested in psychology and in his uncle’s theories.
Procter and Gamble hired Bernays in 1923 to help with advertising Ivory soap and Crisco. He crafted a survey that showed a preference for "white unperfumed soap." This was helped by the wording and sequence of his questions. Ivory was the only white unperfumed soap on the market; when the media reported the results, Bernays met his goal.
He spoke of himself as a "practicing social scientist" whose "competence is like that of the industrial engineer, the management engineer, or the investment counselor in their respective fields." To assist clients, PR counselors used "understanding of the behavioral sciences and applying them—sociology, social psychology, anthropology, history, etc." In Propaganda, his most important book, written in 1928, Bernays argued that scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society (a modern Hobbes). He said in 1947, “The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.” (The Engineering of Consent, 1947).
Bernays died in 1995.
Bernays pioneered the use of clever wording in polls. Breathless Hokey Cokie Roberts tells us on NPR about how the latest polls show that support for Obama’s health plan is slipping. That comes from questions like this: Do you want a tax hike now or would you prefer to put off healthcare reform until the economy is better? Well, the mindless robots say- NO TAX INCREASE. Other polls ask how you feel about government run healthcare- France & Canada don’t run healthcare, they provide money and regulation. We Californians have a variant on this manipulative poll: Do you favor taxing marijuana or do you want social services cut to balance the state budget? Naturally, a majority goes for the pie in the sky. Tax marijuana, not big oil or any established business. Actually the clever Commie terminator doesn’t care what you go for as long as you spare his people. That’s the secret of social security, as the WSJ pointed out yesterday - since the income of people who earn above the $106,000 social security tax cutoff is increasing faster than those who earn less, we are slowly starving the beast, slimming down that evil social security program. Jerome tells it like it is
Part II will discuss ballot initiatives and referenda in more detail. Ralph Nader spoke in favor a national referendum.